Violence in Mexico: “The Holy Father is well informed about all of this,” Rodrigo Guerra says

Rodrigo Guerra López, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Photo courtesy of Rodrigo Guerra.

In Mexico, thousands of families continue searching for a son, a sister, a father or a mother. As of May 10, 2026, the National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons listed more than 133,000 people whose whereabouts remained unknown, according to Amnesty International. Many families have organized search collectives. The madres buscadoras, or “searching mothers,” as many of the women leading these efforts are known in Mexico, demand effective action from authorities to find their loved ones, establish what happened and secure justice.

Against this backdrop, Press Crux spoke with Rodrigo Guerra López, a Mexican philosopher, founder of the Center for Advanced Social Research, known by its Spanish acronym CISAV, and a member of the Pontifical Academies for Life and of Social Sciences. According to the Holy See’s official directory, he serves as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, the Vatican body that studies the circumstances of local Churches in the region and offers them guidance and support. There he worked with Robert Francis Prevost, who headed the commission before being elected pope as Leo XIV.

Asked how the Holy See views the violence affecting Mexico, Guerra says, “The Holy Father is well informed about all of this.” He also explains that the commission monitors these situations and, on occasion, supports local pastors. In discussing the Church’s mission in Mexico, he returns to the phrase “an unarmed and disarming peace,” which Leo XIV used in his first greeting as pope, connecting it to the responsibility to reduce violence and build peace with justice and dignity.

The conversation also explores continuity between Francis and Leo XIV, the role of friendship in sharing the faith with young people, and the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe for reconciliation as the 500th anniversary of the Guadalupe apparitions approaches in 2031. The full interview follows.

Rodrigo Guerra López receives a blessing from Pope Leo XIV. Photo courtesy of Rodrigo Guerra.

1. In your role as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, what do you consider the main challenges facing the Church on our continent today?

It is very easy to draw up an enormous list of challenges facing the Church in the Americas based on the ecclesial, social, economic or political situations unfolding across the continent. From my perspective, however, the most important is our need as a Church to rediscover Jesus Christ as a living Person who invites us to conversion, fraternity and mission. The loss of missionary awareness in the Church is usually accompanied by a formalistic and/or moralistic reduction of the Gospel that leads us, without our realizing it, to “point fingers,” “denounce” or “defend” rather than “proclaim.”

2. With Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, what priorities are beginning to emerge for Latin America? What continuity and new emphases do you see in relation to the path set by Pope Francis?

The priority is to joyfully proclaim the “kerygma”: Jesus is risen, and I bear witness to this from my personal experience of conversion and from the circumstances in which I live!

Pope Leo XIV is a man who has received Pope Francis’ witness and teaching with immense gratitude. There is a genuine creative continuity between them. The new emphases that emerge arise from their different life stories and the new circumstances taking shape. The encyclical Magnifica humanitas is an eloquent example: continuity in what is essential, with personal emphases that cannot be overlooked.

3. Latin America is a region of profound contradictions: It has a strong Christian tradition, yet it is also marked by violence, inequality, corruption and poverty. What can the Church do to ensure that faith leads to genuine social transformation?

The Gospel, when embraced in its entirety, is not simply a message for private life but also for Christians’ public presence. The Church’s social teaching makes the social dimension of faith explicit.

When we ask, “What can the Church do?” we must immediately consider the invitation offered by the social magisterium: to transform the world according to Jesus Christ. To transform it through our conversion and our decisions in every setting, even in the most technical spheres or those seemingly “resistant” to the Christian message.

This is precisely why studying and spreading the Church’s social teaching is so important. That is where the agenda is. There we find enduring principles, criteria for judgment and guidelines for action on a wide range of issues.

4. Mexico is facing a severe crisis of violence and disappearances that has also affected priests, religious and Church communities. How does the Holy See view this situation, and what role should the Church play in building peace?

The violence we see in Mexico and around the world can easily tempt us to live by the “law of retaliation.” In other words, violence breeds violence, forming a spiral in which every step brings a reaction and feeds the cycle.

At the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, we constantly monitor these situations and, on some occasions, accompany our pastors so that our vision always reaches beyond grievances and conflicts. This does not mean “escaping” reality, but discovering that there is always an alternative to violence. A more human and more Christian alternative.

That alternative is built with truth, goodness, justice and forgiveness. The number of people killed and disappeared in Mexico over the past 10 years is comparable to that of a major armed conflict. The Holy Father is well informed about all of this. His teaching on promoting an “unarmed and disarming peace” is our fundamental grammar.

In Mexico, the Church is called to de-escalate conflicts and violence. It is called to proclaim peace with justice and dignity.

5. In several Latin American countries, younger generations appear to be distancing themselves from religious institutions. What needs to change in the way the Church evangelizes so that young people can rediscover the beauty and hope of the Gospel?

The beauty and appeal of faith become real only when a tangible friendship offers me a different way of life. In other words, what most deeply moves a young person’s heart is encountering a group of friends who embrace them and show through their lives that Christian love is possible — and that it is possible because of an Event that transforms life, namely, Christ! Not through our own strength or strategies!

In other words: Belonging to a concrete community of companions is a constitutive dimension of faith! Our faith is not a solipsistic certainty but an experience of communion born of an Event. This is what it means to discover the Church as the people of God on a journey, rather than merely as pious discourse or a moral formula!

6. The Church has stressed the importance of walking alongside the poor and people on the margins. How can Christian communities turn this commitment into action rather than leaving it at the level of words?

A recurring temptation in Christian life is to build a seemingly justified “comfort zone.” This is the breeding ground for bourgeois Christianity.

Bourgeois Christianity appears proper: It attends Mass on Sundays and is made up of seemingly respectable people who, deep down, have not given Jesus Christ permission to encounter them in the way he wishes to be present in history.

In Ecclesia in America, Pope St. John Paul II reminds us that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Word of God, in the Eucharist and in the actual persons of history’s poorest and most marginalized. St. Augustine taught in this regard that the poorest are a true sacrament of Jesus Christ.

Living in communion means allowing ourselves to be educated through friendship with the poorest. Touching their wounds and tending to them means coming into contact with the living flesh of Jesus. Whatever we do to a vulnerable person, someone cast aside or marginalized, we really do to Jesus himself.

True fidelity to the faith passes through this dimension of closeness and friendship with the poorest. From their perspective and alongside them, we must learn to show the Church’s true face.

7. As the 500th anniversary of the Guadalupe apparitions approaches in 2031, what significance can Our Lady of Guadalupe have for reconciliation, unity and hope in Mexico and throughout Latin America?

I believe we need to remind ourselves constantly that Mary is present at Tepeyac so that God’s mercy may be revealed, proclaimed and offered anew, even amid the social divisions tearing through Mexico and the entire continent.

If we help one another remember this, we can continue living “within” the “Guadalupe miracle” — that is, within an experience that contributes to building the “little sacred house,” a space of communion, freedom and dignity that Our Lady proposed to Friar Juan de Zumárraga through St. Juan Diego.

The “Guadalupe miracle” is, to a great extent, a miracle of conversion and social reconciliation. A miracle of radical goodness and the recovery of the true meaning of our freedom and dignity.

José María Morelos used to say that Our Lady of Guadalupe is the “Patroness of our freedom.” And she is — but not of the freedom of “liberals,” much less of “libertarians,” but of those of us who discover that we have been forgiven despite our many sins. From the experience of knowing ourselves forgiven, we can offer renewed paths of reconciliation and unity for our society.

8. From your personal experience and your close involvement with the Holy See’s work, what signs of hope do you see in the Latin American Church today that may not be receiving enough media attention?

The most important signs of hope I see in Latin America are women, the poor and young people. In them, we can most clearly perceive the spiritual energy to create new ways of living together that are less utilitarian, less pragmatic and more fraternal.

These three social “groups” are also where faith is often born and reborn in a more essential and authentic way.

9. Finally, what message would you like to share with families, young people and those who are beginning to lose hope amid violence, economic hardship or suffering?

Pope Francis repeatedly said that we need to “dream together” — that is, to recognize that a positive future is possible. The positive outlook I am speaking of does not spring from naive optimism, but from the certainty that evil does not have the last word.

That certainty comes from Jesus Christ, who, through his resurrection, definitively conquered sin and death. He is our hope. No social or political utopia can deliver on its promises. Only Jesus can make possible what seems impossible: that my heart, and the hearts of my brothers and sisters, may change so that the world may change.

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